Playing With / A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read

Basic Trope: The ability to read minds isn't all it's cracked up to be, as it can uncover unpleasant secrets that might be better if left unknown.

• Straight: Alice uses her mind-reading ability on Bob, and finds out that either...
  a) He's thinking lustful thoughts about her
  b) He despises, loathes, and hates her.
  c) Both possibilities apply... And he's not the only one.
  d) He's thinking: "Why is Alice staring at me like that? It's creepy!"
  It ends up becoming a constant source of Paranoia Fuel to her.
• Exaggerated:
  • Alice finds out that Bob has disturbingly detailed and graphic homicidal thoughts about her, not to mention all the horrific fetishes he wants to make true when he gets his hands on her and rapes her to death. Cue the Heroic BSoD.
  • Alice mind reads not only Bob, but the others as well, even her female friends. However, their thoughts were too incomprehensible to even mentally read, and she becomes permanently insane.
• Downplayed:
  • Alice discovers that Bob doesn't like her cooking.
  • Alice discovers nasty nature of Bob's line of work. She ends up deeply concerned about him and never looks the same on his stoic expression...
• Justified: The mind is sometimes a very dark, scary place, particularly when it comes down to the subconscious mind.
  • Bob is a survivor of some kind of trauma. Alice reads Bob's mind to try to understand his trauma, and winds up experiencing it vicariously.
  • Bob (or Alice) is insane.
  • Alice and Bob are of such different moral alignments that they find each other's morals incomprehensible and horrific.
• Inverted:
  • Alice uses her mind-reading ability on Bob, who she didn't held on high esteem, and finds out that he thinks very highly of her.
  • Alice finds mind reading an indispensable social crutch for her to cope with her issues and function.
  • Alice uses her psychic powers to resurface General Bob's deeply locked memories. In few seconds he goes from hero-killing machine to terrified, crying mess of a man.
• Subverted:
  • Alice finds out that Bob has a crush on her.
  • Alice reads Bob's mind, only to hear nothing at all.
  • Bob knew that new telepaths often get in a habit of reading minds so he started thinking disturbing things to give her a lesson in respecting privacy.
  • Alice is unbothered by the disturbing things she reads in Bob's mind, as she is aware from having a mind of her own that spontaneous morbid thoughts are common and natural in everybody. She rarely puts much stock in them...
• Double Subverted:
  • But Alice finds Bob repulsive, and the fact that he has a crush on her even more repulsive!
  • The complete lack of thought and the implications thereof is itself disturbing to Alice.
  • The thoughts about wanting to make her his slave were real however. OR she likes it.
  • ... Unless Alice begins to notice an escalating pattern of disturbing thoughts that carry a sense of intentionality.
• Parodied:
  • Every single mind that Alice reads is full of disturbing and/or embarrassingly ridiculous secrets! Each. And. Every. Single. ONE!
  • Bob's secret is something relatively innocuous, like his fondness for campy low-budget sci-fi movies. Nevertheless, Alice's faith in humanity is shattered after find out the "horrible" truth!
  • Alice looks into Bob's mind, and finds dust and cobwebs, suggesting that there isn't much going on up there.
• Zig Zagged: Because the brain is a complex thing that is never doing one thing, Alice sees horrifying things, unimpressive things, loopy things, intelligent ideas, pleasant thoughts, et cetera.
• Averted:
  • Alice sees nothing disturbing in Bob's thought processes.
  • Alice does not have the ability to read minds.
• Enforced: Be Careful What You Wish For
• Lampshaded: "Wow, Bob is one sick puppy..."
• Invoked: Alice needs to scan the thoughts of Bob, a known Handsome Lech, and/or her worst enemy.
• Exploited:
  • Bob has feelings for Alice and hopes she'll reciprocate, so he thinks romantic and/or sexual thoughts featuring her.
  • Bob wants to keep Alice from his head, period. So he starts to generate some very disturbing Psychic Static made of his bad experiences from World War III, overlayed with a disturbingly cheery tune. Alice faints and never again tries to read Bob's mind.
• Defied: Alice decides to AVOID people's inner mind while using her mind-reading powers, and instead focus on scanning their immediate thoughts.
• Discussed: Charlotte expresses admiration for Alice's mind-reading powers, and she exclaims that it must be coolest thing in the world. Alice's response?
  Alice: "It isn't as awesome as you might think... Some of the things that I've seen... Let's just say they are NOT pretty... AT ALL!"
• Conversed: "Letting her keep the mind-reading power would change the status quo too much, so I bet they give it downsides that make her decide to get rid of it."
• Implied:
  • Alice ended up going misanthropic and isolating herself from humanity after she gained telepathy.
  • Alice is an inventor that made a mind reading device, but destroyed it after only using it once. She refuses to explain why.
  • After reading Bob's mind, Alice's slaps him and storms off without elaborating.
• Deconstructed:
  • The ability to read minds causes Alice to forget that there is a very strong different between peoples actions and thoughts, and she can never see anyone the same way again.
  • Due to the constant Paranoia Fuel and not being able to tell her own thoughts apart from everyone's else, Alice develops schizophrenia. In addition, her mindreading has become an unhealthy obsession after recognition from others.
  • Seeing the fine details of how human brains really works leads to some major Existential Horror. It drives Alice to agree with Steelidan that humans are just dangerously erratic defective machines following their own Insane Troll Logic.
• Played For Laughs:
  • Alice sees a Good Angel, Bad Angel argument.
  • Alice sees cobwebs and dust, or monkeys grooming each other, or something similar, suggesting that Bob doesn't have much going on in that head of his.
  • "Inner Bob" is caught in a compromising position with naughty pictures of Alice. Then upon being "caught in the act", he Screams Like a Little Girl.
  • Alice decides to read Bob's mind, thinking it will be a super wacky and comical experience. One Gilligan Cut later, she's curled into fetal position, rolling in the floor while crying uncontrollably and repeatedly babbling: "Anti-Life justifies my hate... Anti-Life justifies my hate..." Believe it: We don't want to know what she saw there!
• Played For Drama:
  • Alice thinks Bob is her friend, and is horrified to find out that he secretly hates her.
  • Alice ends up developing mental issues from dealing with this. She has anxiety issues about what people are thinking about her when she isn't in their presence, losing faith in humanity and falling into depression from dealing with it.
  • Alice reads Bob's mind and realises that he raped her while she was unconscious.
• Played For Horror:
  • Exposure to Bob's filthy mind drives Alice insane.
  • We don't know what Alice read in Bob's mind, but it made her yank out the gun from the nearest guard, shove it in her mouth and pull the trigger within seconds of ending contact.
  • Bob is so mentally obscene and in control of his thoughts that he manages to brainwash Alice into becoming a minion.
  • Alice enters Bob’s mind only to run into the mental projection of Bob, which is a Captain Ersatz of Freddy Krueger. There’s no waking up from this nightmare…
  • Alice scans Bob's mind to find his knowledge of Cthulhu… and finds it.